Conduit (excerpt)
—Sable hair in the sun like thrown ink rounded a corner, gone. And behind, a witch’s broom of gray sauntered after.
I could feel her.
Unemployed and struggling for air, I emigrated from northern California, a sea of electric cars and broken privacy laws, to New York City, a thyroidal mass of concrete, glass, and rats all driven by grating animus, for a second degree. The first hadn't landed livable work, surely another two hundred thousand dollars and a cross country move would. At least, that’s what I told my family.
Summer, heavy with sweat, hunkered between the city's even blocks to pressurecook its uneven people. I could taste the brine when I squeezed into an undersized and windowless room that squatted on Harlem’s gentrified southwesterly edge. My bed, a square the size and consistency of burnt toast, and my closet, the cubby of space beneath my desk, allowed me a modicum of uncomfortable refuge.
The room's warped flooring crawled with cigarette burns and, occasionally, a sooty rat or two. It wasn’t ideal, but I gathered that I’d found a bargain, so I stuck with it.
My first downtown trip introduced me to a squabbish man with a circus cat perched on his head who hissed at passersby, and an elderly, pregnant woman who held a teal chicken captive between her ample breasts. Pictures of either cost five dollars, cash—a little out of my league. Moneyed fashionistas, the homeless, indebted students, stock traders, tourists, and buskers of all stripes walked and worked these streets to survive. I paced them to escape the black-haired girl and her steak knife...
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